PARACHUTE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Parachute

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/pˈɛrəʃˌut/ Listen

noun

Parachute n.

A device made of a piece of cloth, usually silk, attached to multiple chords fastened to a harness; when attached to a person or object falling through the air, it opens from a folded configuration into an umbrella-shaped form, thus slowing the rate of descent so that a safe descent and landing may be made through the air from an airplane, balloon, or other high point. It is commonly used for descending to the ground from a flying airplane, as for military operations (as of airborne troops) or in an emergency, or for sport. In the case of use as a sport, the descent from an airplane by parachute is called sky diving. Some older versions of parachute were more rigid, and were shaped somewhat in the form of an umbrella.

(Zool.) A web or fold of skin which extends between the legs of certain mammals, as the flying squirrels, colugo, and phalangister.

verb

parachute v. i. TO descend to th ground from an airplane or other high place using a parachute; as, when the plane stalled, he parachuted safely to the ground.

golden parachute a generous set of financial benefits, including severance pay, provided by contract to a high-level corporate employee in the event s/he is dismissed or his/her job is lost in a corporate takeover or merger; also, the contract providing for such benefits.

drogue parachute a small parachute that is first released and opened in order to more reliably deploy a larger parachute. Also called drogue.

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Etymology of 'Parachute'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Parachute" Quotes from Famous Books

... Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with pink. There was no ...

— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... father, or went on the steamboat. Last week a balloon went up, from the other side of the river. We had a fine view of it from the roof of our house. Two men were in it, and when they had risen so high that the balloon appeared quite small, they threw out a little machine, called a parachute. It looked something like an umbrella, and had a dog to it. The balloon sailed a great distance through the air, ...

— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel

... touched a lever and the machine glided down towards the valley, falling all the while with the effortless grace a parachute. The shed from which his machine had issued was midway down a slope, with a short length of rails which ran, apparently, through it. The machine seemed to hover for several moments above the building, then descended slowly on to the rails ...

— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can't. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I'm dead so I ...

— Accidental Death • Peter Baily

... area is 'No-Man's-Land,' for it is on that mighty graveyard stretching from Switzerland to the sea that the enemy's eyes are bent. The regiments used to get various kinds of flares to experiment with. We used to laugh over an incident that occurred when a new type, a species of parachute, had been served out. The Second-in-command, who fired it, miscalculated the strength of the wind, which was blowing from the enemy's trench, and the flare was carried in a stately curve backwards until it was directly over battalion headquarters. Here it hung for a long time, showing up all ...

— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan

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